Thursday, 11 October 2012

Early Models of Cyberpsychology

1: Based on your experience in various cyberspace
venues, is there, as Short et al (1976) proposed, a lack of the presence of
others when communicating and interacting online? And does this affect how you
behave?

From personal experiences, it depends on what kind of venue
you are in whether or not you experience a lack of presence of others when
online. For example, a social networking site does not tend to encourage the
sensation of presence in that particular environment; however, a multi-media
environment where one has their own figure to explore the venue does. I think
that this can affect the way you behave in different ways depending on what
kind of virtual environment you are in at the time. On Facebook, people can
change the ways in which they behave as it could make them more narcissistic
due to the ability to report ‘what is on your mind’. On top of this, narcissism
can increase and become obsessive as some people check how many ‘likes’ or ‘comments’
they may have on a particular post that they have created. A study called ‘It
Is All about Being Popular: The Effects of Need for Popularity on Social Network
Site Use’ by Sonja Utz, Martin Tanis, and Ivar Vermeulen (16th January,
2012) highlights that behaviour can significantly change when concerning need
for popularity and social networking sites. Another factor to consider when
Facebook is being discussed is that it could also increase the ability to
observe others’ behaviours and can lead to an unhealthy obsession with certain
people.

Online gaming and
being existent in a multi-media environment online can also change your
behaviour. Personally, I think this is due to the fact that you live a life in
the virtual world through your personal figure and you can become attached to
this figure and this way of life within the given environment. This can affect
behaviour because it could make you become much more sensitive about other
people’s actions against your character, and thus may make you become more
aggressive online, and subsequently taking any offence personally rather than maintaining
a gaming status. One study by Nicholas David Bowman, Daniel Schultheiss, and
Christina Schumann (12th March, 2012) found that character
attachment (CA) does have an effect on behaviour online, and that pro-social
gamers have a greater sense of control over their characters, whereas
anti-social gamers are more likely to forget about the real world and do not
take responsibility over their actions in their virtual environment. Therefore,
behaviour can change depending on the virtual environment, especially when a
sense of physical presence is experienced.